Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Reality Check

CTV has this new segment on their political show called "Reality Check". Today, Sun Media's Greg Weston was on, and the topic of the upcoming Green Party convention came up. In discussing whether or not the Greens would be able to maintain a high profile and voting share, Weston first made some derogatory comment about the Greens in general, then fluffed off any suggestion of Green votes bleeding to the benefit of the Liberals. While there's no question the dynamics have changed with Ignatieff at the helm, as well as no sense that the Green vote is eroding, it was still curious that Weston piped off, stating "all the polls show" that Conservatives have the most to benefit from any crater in Green support. According to Weston, all the data suggests the Conservatives are the second choice of Green supporters. You know, if you're going to be so dismissive, with the know it all tone, you could at least have the semblance of a CLUE:

Harris Decima

EKOS:

The Conservatives never rise from third choice in the Decima poll, this is mirrored by EKOS. As a matter of fact "all the polls" I've seen confirm the above, so I'd love to know Weston's source material, or does working for SunMedia impede basic comprehension.

A small quibble for sure, but Weston was just so sure of himself, I thought I'd do my own "Reality Check" for the reality checker.

Done. Maybe he meant "none of the polls", as opposed to all of them ;)

Joseph

I'm proud to say I don't have FOX news on my cable provider. I did watch the Harpo interview online, and forgot about that "fair and balanced" tag, what a joke of biblical proportions. The sad part, people probably believe it.

My sense is that most Green voters are anti-Tory voters who would split pretty evenly between the NDP and Liberals - depending on the riding and region. There are SOME ex-Tories who vote Green to lodge a low-stakes protest at their party - but I think they are far outnumbered by anti-Tories who can't decide between Liberal and NDP. Then there is an even smaller segment of dyed in the wool greens who would not vote at all without any Green party. So if the greens got 6.7% last time - I think that if their vote plummeted to 3% - the NDP and Libs would each gain 1.5% and the Tories might pick up .5%

I actually know of several former conservatives - one who even voted for Mike Harris - who voted Green last fall, including a former Ontario PC cabinet minister.The Greens are the conservative party Canada should have, because they represent a communitarian political philosophy,in fact, they a cooperative commonwealth POV, that the NDP lost when the old CCF became a Labour party. Green conservatism is one in which individual responsibilities and freedoms are coupled with societal change. Political parties are always coalitions of vested interests seeking advantage over other coalitions, and for now, the vested interests with most of the advantages are corporate, whether they be neo-liberal or neo-corporatist alliances. Since corporatists and neo-liberals are both corporate-capitalist, they have 'no conscience to bind them', so we get tar sands instead of conservation from our conservatives and we get Iggy supporting the tar sands for political gains in the west.And because the NDP is a Labour Party, it's members are corporatist by default, they are their own enemy because they cannot advance their position beyond corporatism, the Greens at this point, are the only partythat can.